Cid Ricketts Sumner

Who was Cid Ricketts Sumner?

Cid Ricketts Sumner was a novelist from the United States. She also taught English at a Jackson, Mississippi high school and French at Millsaps College.

Sumner was born Bertha Louise Ricketts in Brookhaven, Mississippi. She was the daughter of Bertha Burnley and Robert Scott Ricketts. Her father was a professor at Millsaps College, and her mother and grandmother provided a homeschooled education for her. She received a BS from Millsaps College in 1909 and an MA from Columbia University in 1910. She continued postgraduate work at Columbia from 1910 to 1914, then enrolled in medical school at Cornell University. She only attended one year of medical school before marrying one of her professors, Nobel Prize winner James B. Sumner, on July 10, 1915. They had four children. They were divorced in 1930.

Several of Ms. Sumner's books were filmed. The most well-known were Quality, which became the movie Pinky; Tammy Out of Time became the movie Tammy and the Bachelor; and Tammy Tell Me True. Quality was quite ahead of its time in terms of addressing miscegenation. It depicts a young, fair-skinned black woman who attends nursing school in the north and passes for white.